Ortega expresses solidarity with US

Ortega blames mass shooting on ‘policy of arms build-up’

By:Nicaragua Dispatch | December 19, 2012

Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega last night offered his solidarity with the people of the United States and the families of the victims of last Friday’s mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which took the lives of 20 children and seven adults.

“How much pain this has caused us!” Ortega said at a police cadet graduation Tuesday night in Managua.

“Our prayers and our solidarity for these people, for the families of the boys and girls and adults who were assassinated in the school, in a country where arms build-up has become a permanent policy of state—arms build-up to bring death throughout the world and arms build-up to bring death to U.S. citizens also,” Ortega said.

The president said he was sending his “solidarity, love and prayers” to the families of the victims.

Ortega also lamented violence and citizen insecurity in Nicaragua, but said “thanks to god” there are alternatives to the politics of death.

“Other proposals are moving forward on our planet, socialist projects, projects of solidarity, Christian projects, projects that are not opting for the path of savage capitalism, rather for the path of humanity,” Ortega said, speaking—presumably—of his government.

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